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An efficient mathematical model to virtually generate woven metal wire meshes is
presented. The accuracy of this model is verified by the comparison of virtual structures with three-dimensional
images of real meshes, which are produced via computer tomography. Virtual structures
are generated for three types of metal wire meshes using only easy to measure parameters. For these
geometries the velocity-dependent pressure drop is simulated and compared with measurements
performed by the GKD - Gebr. Kufferath AG. The simulation results lie within the tolerances of
the measurements. The generation of the structures and the numerical simulations were done at
GKD using the Fraunhofer GeoDict software.

2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) is a highly toxic and persistent organic pollutant, which is ubiquitously found in the environment. The prototype dioxin compound was classified as a human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. TCDD acts as a potent liver tumor promoter in rats, which is one of the major concerns related to TCDD exposure. There is extensive evidence, that TCDD exerts anti-estrogenic effects via arylhydrocarbon receptor (AhR)-mediated induction of cytochromes P450 and interferes with the estrogen receptor alpha (ERalpha)-mediated signaling pathway. The present work was conducted to shed light on the hypothesis that enhanced activation of estradiol metabolism by TCDD-induced enzymes, mainly CYP1A1 and CYP1B1, leads to oxidative DNA damage in liver cells. Furthermore, the possible modulation by 17beta-estradiol (E2) was investigated. The effects were examined using four different AhR-responsive species- and sex-specific liver cell models, rat H4II2 and human HepG2 hepatoma cell lines as well as rat primary hepatocytes from male and female Wistar rats. The effective induction of CYP1A1 and CYP1B1 by TCDD was demonstrated in all liver cell models. Basal and TCDD-induced expression of CYP1B1, which is a key enzyme in stimulating E2 metabolism via the more reactive formation of the genotoxic 4-hydroxyestradiol, was most pronounced in rat primary hepatocytes. CYP-dependent induction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) was only observed in rodent cells. E2 induced ROS only in primary rat hepatocytes, which was associated with a weak CYP1B1 mRNA induction. Thus, E2 itself was suggested to induce its own metabolism in primary rat hepatocytes, resulting in the redox cycling of catechol estradiol metabolites leading to ROS formation. In this study the role of TCDD and E2 on oxidative DNA damage was investigated for the first time in vitro in the comet assay using liver cells. Both TCDD and E2 were shown to induce oxidative DNA base modifications only in rat hepatocytes. Additionally, direct oxidative DNA-damaging effects of the two main E2 metabolites, 4-hydroxyestradiol and 2-hydroxyestradiol, were only observed in rat hepatocytes and revealed that E2 damaged the DNA to the same extent. However, the induction of oxidative DNA damage by E2 could not completely be explained by the metabolic conversion of E2 via CYP1A1 and CYP1B1 and has to be further investigated. The expression of low levels of endogenous ERalpha mRNA in primary rat hepatocytes and the lack of ERalpha in hepatoma cell lines were identified as crucial. Therefore, the effects of interference of ERalpha with AhR were examined in HepG2 cells, which were transiently transfected with ERalpha. The over-expression of ERalpha led to enhanced AhR-mediated transcriptional activity by E2, suggesting a possible regulation of E2 levels. In turn, TCDD reduced E2-mediated ERalpha signaling, confirming the anti-estrogenic action of TCDD. Such a modulation of the combined effects of TCDD with E2 was not observed in any of the other experiments. Thus, the role of low endogenous ERalpha levels has to be further investigated in transfection experiments using rat primary hepatocytes. Overall, rat primary hepatocyte culture turned out to be the more adaptive cell model to investigate metabolism in the liver, reflecting a more realistic situation of the liver tissue. Nevertheless, during this work a crosstalk between ERalpha and AhR was shown for the first time using human hepatoma cell line HepG2 by transiently transfecting ERalpha.

Nowadays, vehicle control systems such as anti-lock braking systems, electronic stability control, and cruise control systems yield many advantages. The electronic control units that are deployed in this specific application domain are embedded systems that are integrated in larger systems to achieve predefined applications. Embedded systems consist of embedded hardware and a large software part. Model-based development for embedded systems offers significant software-development benefits that are pointed out in this thesis. The vehicle control system Adaptive Cruise Control is developed in this thesis using a model-based software development process for embedded systems. As a modern industrial design tool that is prevalent in this domain, simulink,is used for modeling the environment, the system behavior, for determining controller parameters, and for simulation purposes. Using an appropriate toolchain, the embedded code is automatically generated. The adaptive cruise control system could be successfully implemented and tested within this short timespan using a waterfall model without increments. The vehicle plant and important filters are fully deduced in detail. Therefore, the design of further vehicle control systems needs less effort for development and precise simulation.

We study the extension of techniques from Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) to temporal logic programming languages. Therefore we present two temporal logic programming languages and analyse the learnability of programs from these languages from finite sets of examples. In first order temporal logic the following topics are analysed: - How can we characterize the denotational semantics of programs? - Which proof techniques are best suited? - How complex is the learning task? In propositional temporal logic we analyse the following topics: - How can we use well known techniques from model checking in order to refine programs? - How complex is the learning task? In both cases we present estimations for the VC-dimension of selected classes of programs.

Classical geometrically exact Kirchhoff and Cosserat models are used to study the nonlinear deformation of rods. Extension, bending and torsion of the rod may be represented by the Kirchhoff model. The Cosserat model additionally takes into account shearing effects. Second order finite differences on a staggered grid define discrete viscoelastic versions of these classical models. Since the rotations are parametrised by unit quaternions, the space discretisation results in differential-algebraic equations that are solved numerically by standard techniques like index reduction and projection methods. Using absolute coordinates, the mass and constraint matrices are sparse and this sparsity may be exploited to speed-up time integration. Further improvements are possible in the Cosserat model, because the constraints are just the normalisation conditions for unit quaternions such that the null space of the constraint matrix can be given analytically. The results of the theoretical investigations are illustrated by numerical tests.

This work is concerned with dynamic flow problems, especially maximal dynamic flows and earliest arrival flows - also called universally maximal flows. First of all, a survey of known results about existence, computation and approximation of earliest arrival flows is given. For the special case of series-parallel graphs a polynomial algorithm for computing maximal dynamic flows is presented and this maximal dynamic flow is proven to be an earliest arrival flow.

Proteins of the intermembrane space of mitochondria are generally encoded by nuclear genes that are synthesized in the cytosol. A group of small intermembrane space proteins lack classical mitochondrial targeting sequences, but these proteins are imported in an oxidation-driven reaction that relies on the activity of two components, Mia40 and Erv1. Both proteins constitute the mitochondrial disulfide relay system. Mia40 functions as an import receptor that interacts with incoming polypeptides via transient, intermolecular disulfide bonds. Erv1 is an FAD-binding sulfhydryl oxidase that activates Mia40 by re-oxidation, but the process how Erv1 itself is re-oxidized has been poorly understood. Here, I show that Erv1 interacts with cytochrome c which provides a functional link between the mitochondrial disulfide relay system and the respiratory chain. This mechanism not only increases the efficiency of mitochondrial inport by the re-oxidation of Erv1 and Mia40 but also prevents the formation of deleterious hydrogen peroxide within the intermembrane space. Thus, the miochondrial disulfide relay system is, analogous to that of the bacterial periplasm, connected to the electron transport chain of the inner membrane, which possibly allows an oxygen-dependend regulation of mitochondrial import rates. In addition, I modeled the structure of Erv1 on the basis of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Erv2 crystal structure in order to gain insight into the molecular mechanism of Erv1. According to the high degree of sequence homologies, various characteristics found for Erv2 are also valid for Erv1. Finally, I propose a regulatory function of the disulfide relay system on the respiratory chain. The disulfide relay system senses the molecular oxygen levels in mitochondria and, thus, is able to adapt respiratory chain activity in order to prevent wastage of NADH and production of ROS.

This dissertation is intended to give a systematic treatment of hypersurface singularities in arbitrary characteristic which provides the necessary tools, theoretically and computationally, for the purpose of classification. This thesis consists of five chapters: In chapter 1, we introduce the background on isolated hypersurface singularities needed for our work. In chapter 2, we formalize the notions of piecewise-homogeneous grading and we discuss thoroughly non-degeneracy in arbitrary characteristic. Chapter 3 is devoted to determinacy and normal forms of isolated hypersurface singularities. In the first part, we give finite determinacy theorems in arbitrary characteristic with respect to right respectively contact equivalence. Furthermore, we show that "isolated" and finite determinacy properties are equivalent. In the second part, we formalize Arnol'd's key ideas for the computation of normal forms an define the conditions (AA) and (AAC). The last part of Chapter 3 is devoted to the study of normal forms in the general setting of hypersurface singularities imposing neither condition (A) nor Newton-Nondegeneracy. In Chapter 4, we present algorithms which we implement in Singular for the purpose of explicit computation of regular bases and normal forms. In chapter 5, we transfer some classical results on invariants over the field C of complex numbers to algebraically closed fields of characteristic zero known as Lefschetz principle.

Subject of this book is an epistemological consideration - a consideration which could be characterised as a main theme - maybe the main theme - of that part of philosophy we all know as epistemology: the nature of knowledge. But other than the most essays on the subject of knowledge, here I am going to deal with a largely overlooked account to try to find an answer to the epistemological question of knowledge. This is the mental state account of knowledge (Price in his 'Belief' the formulation ``mental acts'' and Williamson talks about a ``state of mind''). Or to put it into the question I chose as title: is knowledge a mental state? We have to concede first that there is only a small group of philosophers who used to explain knowledge in terms of a mental state, particularly the `Oxford Realists'. And secondly, the acceptance of the MS thesis is low and negative. There is an interesting detail here: unlike the poor interest in an epistemic theory such as the MS thesis, philosophers like Prichard or Austin (and their philosophical thinking) are not really living in the shadows of philosophical consideration. Indeed their philosophical impact is high level, if we consider for instance Prichard's moral writings or Austin's theory of speech acts. I think we can conclude from this fact that the reason of the `negative' ignorance in respect of their epistemological point of view was not caused by a negative quality of their philosophy. Now, the question we are faced with (and that should be answered here) is: what is wrong with the MS thesis even though it is held by high class philosophers? Why is the epistemic thinking of Cook Wilson, Prichard and Austin afflicted with such ignorance? I will try to explain this later on with the notion of an unreflected Platonian heritage during 2000 years of epistemic thinking - a notion which is similar to a point Hetherington has called ``epistemic absolutism''. So, there are three main purposes which I am pursuing in this consideration: 1.To explain the reasons why there is such an ignorance towards an assertion of the MS thesis. I am going to pursue this through an analysis of knowledge which will demonstrate the inappropriateness of the JTB thesis as an adequate analysis of knowledge. 2.To describe that it is a mistake to ignore or at least underestimate the MS thesis in the discussion of an appropriate definition of knowledge and to maintain that the MS thesis is the key to a general theory of knowledge. 3.Conclusion: If the first two steps are correct, the JTB thesis is insufficient in order to give an account of the nature of knowledge in general. A consequence from this is: all the epistemic theories which are dealing with the JTB thesis are based on deficient assumptions. Hence their results - notably the well-known externalism/internalism debate - are insufficient, too. So, there is a need for a new theory of knowledge based on the MS thesis. In the course of my consideration I am going to justify the following three theses: i) The JTB thesis as a definition of knowledge in general is deficient, as the JTB thesis describes the propositional aspect of knowledge only. But the propositional knowledge - the so-called `knowledge that' - is merely one element among others that has to be recognized in search of a theory of knowledge. ii) The status of the `knowledge that' is derivative and not ultimate. It is derived from the non- propositional knowledge in order to make the non-propositional knowledge communicable to others. The mode of the `knowledge that' is indirect and thus can be stated in the third person point of view only. This ultimate kind of knowledge - the knowledge which the `knowledge that' is derived from - is the non-propositional knowledge. Its mode is direct and hence it is restricted to the first person point of view. Therefore the basis towards a theory of knowledge in general has to be this non-propositional aspect of knowledge. iii) Hence, taking the first two theses for granted, an appropriate theory of knowledge needs an account of the non-propositional knowledge. The MS thesis will accomplish this task.

Limit theorems constitute a classical and important field in probability theory. In several applications, in particular in demographic or medical contexts, killed Markov processes suggest themselves as models for populations undergoing culling by mortality or other processes. In these situations mathematical research features a general interest in the observable distribution of survivors, which is known as Yaglom limit or quasi-stationary distribution. Previous work often focuses on discrete state spaces, commonly birth-death processes (or with some more flexible localization of the transitions), with killing only on the boundary. The central concerns of this thesis are to describe, for a given class of one dimensional diffusion processes, the quasistationary distributions (if any), and to describe the convergence (or not) of the process conditioned on survival to one of these quasistationary distributions. Rather general diffusion processes on the half-line are considered, where 0 is allowed to be regular or an exit boundary. Very similar techniques are applied in this work in order to derive results on the large time behavior of an exotic measure valued process, which is closely related to so-called point interactions, which have been widely studied in the mathematical physics literature.